6 ms·
The problem for most information jobs is it's very hard to measure performance. Basically, I don't know how long a particular task should take, since every task
by smanek 18y ago
The problem for most information jobs is it's very hard to measure performance. Basically, I don't know how long a particular task should take, since every task is so different. It's very easy to notice when a guy on an assembly line is slacking.
But, if Tom takes 3 months to complete a new feature/analysis and turns in reams of code/analysis, there's no easy way for me to tell if he was super-productive and finished 6 months of work in 3, or if he over engineered a solution and stretched a month's work into three.
Even worse, Tom doesn't even know how productive he is. He'll think that whatever solution he ends up with is the best possible.
Code reviews, pair programming, etc. all work to alleviate this information black hole. But they just end up stratifying information workers since, over time, workers will rise to better companies in accordance with their competence. And this will just worsen the information disparity. If most of your coworkers are at the same level of competence as you, no one will be able tell you how good you really are.
Incidentally, based on anecdotal evidence, I believe this stratification will start at the bottom and work its way up. And that it is now about 25% complete. I've actually visited a company whose core business is sorting (mailing industry), where not a single employee had a reasonable understanding of Big-O notation, any standard sort algorithms, or any standard threading techniques. I've visited other companies (healthcare industry) that have over a million lines of VB6 (and they like it!) with no plans to transition for at least a decade. Another does most of its work on IBM Mainframes (VSE), and in spite of constantly running up against the limits of the platform, had never even heard of or investigated z/VM, LPARS, or Hipersockets (they thought I was making stuff up when I started to tell them about how all these features would make their lives easier). They scare away most decent programmers, and people who become decent run away. And, all the engineers at these places think they're great.
Anyways, done ranting. I just finished interviewing around the country (eventually found a great company), and was really surprised by the fact that companies with dozens/hundreds of programmers apparently didn't have one good programmer.
- diN0bot 18y agowow. stratification to this extent makes me think that a "good" programmer, one who has had the opportunity to learn even a little from programmers in reasonably high levels, will always be able to find a job, even if it's just a crap job with good pay at a company where one has to lead the raising of the status quo. do you think this is more or less true?
- smanek 18y agoI think that seems true. I'm not particularly good (just moderately competent), and had no trouble finding work in what is ostensibly one of the worst economies in 70 years.
- aaronblohowiak 18y agoDitto. Was out of work for a little under 2 weeks.
- gravitycop 18y agoalways be able to find a job [...] do you think this is more or less true? Ted didn't. http://cyber.eserver.org/unabom.txt http://cyber.eserver.org/unabom.txt First let us postulate that the computer scientists succeed in developing intelligent machines that can do all things better than human beings can do them. [...] As society and the problems that face it become more and more complex and machines become more and more intelligent, people will let machines make more of their decision for them, simply because machine-made decisions will bring better result than man-made ones. [...] because human work will no longer be necessary the masses will be superfluous, a useless burden on the system. The only employment available to an increasing - as technology evolves - portion of the population, will be workfare.
- ars 18y agoTed is assuming - without evidence - that machines will be able to make decisions. Today that is not true, and for the foreseeable future it's not true as well. Someone needs to program all those machines to crunch the data needed to help humans make good decisions. ...and machines become more and more intelligent... They have never done so in the past, so why do you think they'll start now? Machines became faster, but not more intelligent. Take chess as an excellent example: humans do not evaluate every possible more - somehow they just think of what the best move is. Machines can not do that, and probably will never be able to. So far they can only do what was pre-programmed for them.
- 18y ago